AV Club 8:30 (Amy) 
[3.00 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
LAT 3:51 (Gareth) rate it
NYT 5:46 (Amy) 
[2.19 avg; 16 ratings] rate it
The New Yorker 5:08 (Jim Q) 
[4.20 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Universal untimed (pannonica) 
[3.67 avg; 3 ratings] rate it
USA Today 7:17 (Emily) rate it
WSJ 5:24 (Eric) [3.00 avg; 5 ratings] rate it
Jonathan Raksin’s New York Times crossword—Amy’s recap
NY Times crossword solution, 6/17/26 – no. 0617
RIFFLE SHUFFLES are the name of the game. If you pretend the letters of GOOFOFFS, CONSOLES, and STONEPIT are playing cards, and you do a riffle shuffle to intersperse them, the letters are redistributed so that the shaded letters that used to be the first four letters are now the 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th letters, while the unshaded second half become the 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th letters. The shuffled words are SET POINT, COOLNESS, and … still GOOFOFFS! fun violation of the usual proscription against repeated entries.
Fave fill: ENCANTO, SHORT CON (don’t we all prefer the drama of a long con, though?), Paul MESCAL (still need to see Hamnet).
Three more things:
- 1A. [Like Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher, some say], MISCAST. The Reacher character is written as a tall, beefy guy. Tom Cruise is something like 5’8″.
- 8A. [App brought back by Microsoft in 2024], MSN. There was an MSN app? And it went away? And then it came back? All this happened without my being aware it existed.
- 22A. [Laterite, for example], ORE. Never heard of it, but minerals ending with -ite are generally ores when they’re found in crossword clues. There are plenty of -ite minerals (calcite and quartzite, to name two) that aren’t ores, though.
Four stars from me.
Enrique Henestroza Anguiano’s AV Club Classic crossword, “Riders on Parade”—Amy’s recap
AV Club Classic crossword solution, 6/17/26 – “Riders on Parade”
Took me a while to figure out the circled letters and how to enter the theme answers. The circled letters spell out P-R-I-D-E, and the longer answers beneath them detour up and back down.
- 16a. [Brew offering from Sapporo or Hitachino], JA, float up to P, bounce back down to the A, NESE BEER. Or JAPANESE BEER.
- 24a. [Like one-sided relationships with celebrities], PARASOCIAL. PA, up to R, back down to RASOCIAL.
- 29a. [Occasion for a ceremonial first pitch], OPENING DAY.
- 39a. [It holds zeroa, beitzah, maror, karpas, and haroset], SEDER PLATE.
- 46a. [“Coco” song with the lyric “For even if I’m far away, I hold you in my heart”], REMEMBER ME.
- 53a. [June parade vehicle, or what you have to get up on (and down from) five times in this puzzle], PRIDE FLOAT.
Fave fill: DON’T EVEN, GO DEEP.
Honest clue: 2d. [Org. once committed to clean air], EPA. These days, more committed to watering down regulations to please corporations.
Four stars from me.
Hunter Murphy’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Opposite’s Attract” — Eric’s Review
Hunter Murphy’s Wall Street Journal Crossword “Opposites Attract” — 6/17/26 (Click to Enlarge)
Congratulations to Hunter Murphy for what appears to be their debut crossword puzzle in a Fiend-reviewed publication!
I’ve been trying to watch some of the FIFA World Cup and failing so badly that I wonder how dedicated sports fans do it. Even with modern technology that allows me to watch stuff on delay, I’m having trouble getting an entire match in. I’m open to suggestions.
But back to Hunter Murphy’s puzzle. It was latish Tuesday night when I solved the puzzle, I haven’t slept well for a couple of nights and I have a nasty little headache. So I only skimmed the clues for the minimum amount of information needed to fill in whatever letters I already had and so didn’t fully appreciate the theme until now:
- 17A [Superficial stereotype of the 1980s (or the opposite of 23-Across?)] VALLEY GIRL
- 23A [Old-time trapper (or the opposite of 17-Across?)] MOUNTAIN MAN
- 33A [Ethel Mertz on “I Love Lucy” (or the opposite of 38-Across?)] LANDLADY
- 38A [Team assistant (or the opposite of 33-Across?)] WATERBOY
- 46A [Amazonian superhero (or the opposite of 55-Across?)] WONDER WOMAN
- 55A [“That’s rough, brah” (or the opposite of 46-Across?)] BUMMER, DUDE
In general, I like the theme answers quite a lot. The first two and the last two all sparkle like a lake on a sunny summer day, and the two in the middle are fine if not quite as fun.
“OH MY GOD! Double rainbow!”
But I question the timing of this theme, here in the middle of Pride Month. I’m a cis-bi guy (don’t tell my husband) and despite having met more trans and non-binary people in the last few years than ever before, I still don’t quite understand what it’s like to consider oneself non-binary. But I accept that the human brain is a marvelous organ and the spectrum of sexual and romantic attraction is wide.
The theme, for all its charm, strikes me as very binary: GIRL ≠ MAN. LADY ≠ BOY. WOMAN ≠ DUDE. (There’s a semantic argument agains that last one; I think “dude” is arguably non-gendered.)
Maybe it’s just “This is part of human sexual and romantic differences and is not exclusive.” But were I Mike Shenk, I’d have held this in the queue a little longer.
It’s entirely possible that I’m overreacting; if you think so, please say something in the comments. I’d ask my husband to read this, but I think I know what he’d say.
Theme aside, I liked BLINTZ, IT’S TOO LATE, CARNE ASADA, LEITMOTIF (for me, the iconic movie leitmotif is Darth Vader’s theme in the first Star Wars), and Rolling Stone Bill WYMAN. And the clue for EMOTE is great.
Thanks, Hunter Murphy!
Hoang-Kim Vu’s Universal crossword, “Hidden Asset” — pannonica’s write-up
Universal • 6/17/26 • Wed • “Hidden Asset” • Vu • solution • 20260617
Seems like an obvious idea for a theme, and I’m pretty sure it’s been done (several times?) before.
- 60aR [Operative in each starred clue’s answer, because of the word a row above it?] UNDERCOVER AGENT. Oh wait, I take that back! I hadn’t read the full revealer clue and had no idea about that additional element.
- 17a. [*Medical milestone of the 1960s] HEART TRANSPLANT.
16a. [“Top” or “fitted” item in a linen closet] SHEET. - 27a. [*Fast-food sandwich option] CRISPY CHICKEN.
23a. [Jar top] LID. - 47a. [*”My goodness!”] HOLY GUACAMOLE.
46a. [Tent protector] TARP.
Much more satisfying!
Overall, an easy and smooth crossword. Let’s see what I can find that’s notable.
- 2d [Apt rhyme for “greet”] MEET. So apt that the two form a very common phrase.
- 3d [Point-of-sale device, often] IPAD. POS, heh.
- 5d [Gesture of gratitude] HAT TIP, which these days is much more likely to be metaphorical or mimed.
- 8d [Pressed sandwich] PANINI. I remain a stick-in-the-mud about panino as the singular.
- 35d [Offline, online] IRL, in real life.
- 42d [Key near Ctrl] ALT. 61d [Key for closing a window?] ESC.
- 45d [Really scrub] SCOUR. No explanation as for why it took me so long to get this entry, but in my solve trajectory it became an isolated peninsula into the bottom third of the grid. Rather than figuring out the answer and methodically continuing to expand my territory, I just picked up sticks and filled in some new entries down there. 48d [Stop progressing, like an investigation] GO COLD.
- 47d [Direct] HEAD-ON. Thought this was a verb, not an adjective.
- 9a [“Starting … now!”] AND GO. Good clue/answer pair.
- 15d [Type of ray that causes tanning] UVA. “The division of UV into UVA, UVB, and UVC was decided ‘unanimously’ by a committee of the Second International Congress on Light on 17 August 1932, at the Castle of Christiansborg in Copenhagen.” (Wikipedia)
- 21a [“__ the beet!” (vegetable pun)] TURNIP. Oh, that’s simply awful.
- 57a [Tour group vehicle] BUS. This was my last entry filled, and without checking the crossings I put in VAN and received no green indication that the puzzle was filled correctly, and so hastily adjusted to the right answer.
- 64a [Word before “lips” or “tea”] LOOSE. Interesting pairing.
- 65a [Dance icon Goodman] LEN. New to me, but I don’t see much television, which is where it seems most people would know him from.
… and that’s all I’ve got.
Robyn Weintraub’s New Yorker crossword — Jim Q’s write-up
Fun puzzle today with several clues that genuinely made me smile. “Whimsical” is the word that keeps coming to mind. I’m not entirely sure why. Could be the clues. Could be the entries. Could be the meds.
New Yorker • 6/17/26 • Wed • Caitlin Reid • solution • 20260610
FAVE ENTRIES:
- BIRD FEEDER Which I confidently entered as BIRD SEEDER, despite “seed” appearing in the clue and despite “bird seeder” not being an actual thing.
- “ARE YOU DONE?” [Query at the end of a lengthy rant] Ah! A question from the recipient of the rant, not the ranter. I was looking for something along the lines of “DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF MY MOUTH?!” which, admittedly, may be a touch long for your average crossword editor’s taste.
- TALKED BACK… Such as a student saying “ARE YOU DONE?” at the end of one of my lengthy rants.
- FOLDING CHAIR. Great clue: [“If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring in a ___” (quote attributed to Shirley Chisholm)]. Could also have been clued as an essential accessory in a WWE storyline.
- OWN UP TO
- SPEAKS UP (Just noticing now a lot of entries that have to do with some sort of verbalization!)
- WONKA[Film character who laments, during a chewing-gum mishap, “It happens every time—they all become blueberries”]. “Chewing-gum mishap” is such delightfully understated wording for that particular scene.
- ONE AND ONLY
OTHER THINGS:
- [Places that sell sundaes and Blizzards, briefly] DQs. I hit up my local DQ last night after the sixth grade moving up ceremony. I recommend the Nutty Buddy Blizzard. A+
- [Rewards for those who wait?] TIPS. Cute clue, but as someone who never fully escaped the service industry, I’m giving this one some side-eye. Does anyone refer to a paycheck as a “reward”?
- LIN [“Hamilton” creator, to friends]. He took a selfie on my phone. I tapped him on
LIN‘s (yes I can call him that) selfie on my phone
the shoulder and asked him to take a picture of me with composer Jeanine Tesori, who had invited me to attend her opera Grounded at the Metropolitan Opera House (how that invitation happened is a whole different story). I didn’t realize who he was until she started laughing and said “Do you know who you just gave your phone too?” So I guess I can call him LIN now too, since we’re clearly friends. If you want to read the rather entertaining story about how I came to be there in the first place, it turned into a surprisingly popular post on Reddit.
4 stars today
Sala Wanetick’s USA Today Crossword, “Down to the Studs” — Emily’s write-up
A punny puzzle today, with that title!
USA Today, June 17, 2026, “Down to the Studs” by Sala Wanetick
Theme: the last word of each downs themer ends with a type of male animal
Themers:
- 21a. [Engage in some idle conversation], SHOOTTHEBULL
- 7a. [Good deal], BANGFORYOURBUCK
- 10a. [Castle gate-crashing weapon], BATTERINGRAM
The themer set includes: SHOOTTHEBULL, BANGFORYOURBUCK, and BATTERINGRAM. I needed a few crossings to get each started but they all filled in fairly easy after that, though for the first themer, a different four-letter word came to mind.
Favorite fill: GAMUT, SNOOP, and MARA
Stumpers: EGYPT (needed crossings), FABLE (needed crossings), and ATBEST (needed crossings)
A lovely grid for this puzzle today, with lots of nice, fresh fill. A smooth solve for me overall today. How’d you all do?
3.5 stars
~Emily
Jeanne D Breen’s LA Today Crossword – Gareth’s write-up
When I encountered 3D SOVIETNAVY, it seemed like a slightly contrived answer. Often these are thematic, and sure enough. The answer in the bottom right is UPSTHEANTE, and each of four long down answers conceal, between their words, ETNA, or ANTE backwards. So:
- [Cold War force…], SOVIETNAVY
- [Parental control software, NETNANNY
- [Terms of endearment], PETNAMES
The grid design choice felt very old-fashioned; it feels like we get a lot more “open-plan” grids over the last while. These do work nicely for early week puzzles though, as there are a lot of 4s and 5s.
Gareth
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 3 stars
Puzzle was ok.
Eric, I think you’re overreacting. But then again I think Pride Month is outdated. A day or a weekend? Fine.
But a month? Not anymore please.
I’m married to my wife. We can serve openly in the military and become teachers. We can have high-level security clearances. We have reached a level of equality that was unimaginable when I was young. Let’s take the many wins and enjoy them.
And please let’s stop looking for problems or slights where they don’t exist.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I don’t deny that there has been great progress on LGBTQ issues in my lifetime. I’ve been with my husband since 1978. When I first realized that he was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I never expected that we would one day be legally married. (And I never expected there to be a Black man in the White House during my lifetime.)
For all the agita that the Supreme Court might someday overrule Obergefell, I am not too worried. But how much of that is that I live in Colorado, where three months after we moved here, we voted in favor a constitutional amendment protecting same-sex marriage rights (which overwhelmingly passed)? By contrast, my former home (Texas) not only purports to still outlaw same-sex marriage, it’s been 23 years since the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ sodomy statute and the legislature still will not repeal it:
https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/?tab=1&code=PE&chapter=PE.21&artSec=
Just yesterday, a friend from Utah made me aware that Utah’s governor had declared that June is not Pride Month but Fidelity Month.
https://www.mamadragons.org/post/letter-to-utah-governor-spencer-cox
(This letter is nicely written and beyond the sentiment it expresses, it’s a wonderful example of how to express disagreement without being strident. (Your comment, Georgina, is another good example of that.))
Yes, let’s celebrate our wins. But let’s also remember how much more progress has yet to be made.
More succinctly: rights are under attack and being rolled back at an alarming pace, and rightwing forces have far greater ambitions. So, no.
The right wing scares me.
The left wing scares me.
I’m glad I’m old.
It appears we are not so different in age. I can’t help but experience the present without considering the horrendous 80s and early 90s when all of “the boys” around us were dying. The responses from politicians and the public was generally despicable and cruel. I’m sure the experience was beyond horrific for you, but it was awful for gay women too. Some of us hated gay men for what happened. But others of us rallied and became activists and volunteers.
So it’s in that historical context that I view the current state of lesbian and gay rights. It’s a different world. I’m grateful for that and appreciate the threats we face. But I don’t see us ever going back to that level of darkness. I hope my optimism isn’t misplaced.
That was a response to Eric.
Thanks for that clarification, Georgina. I was pretty sure you were responding to me and not pannonica.
I’m 67. I am 99.9% convinced that I managed to avoid HIV only because I met the love of my life my freshman year at UT.
For a gay man of my generation, I lucked out as it were during the AIDS epidemic. I had one good friend who died from AIDS. His partner was also HIV positive but is still alive today (at 70-something) and is very involved in helping raise his now-teenage grandson.
I don’t disagree that our society has made tremendous strides in my lifetime on LGBTQ issues. I don’t think it’s going to go back to what it was like when I graduated high school (or worse). My darling husband is more pessimistic about what could happen. And when you have the president calling Neo-Nazi marchers “good people,” well, it’s hard to say there’s nothing to worry about.
Happy Pride Month (Day/Week, whatever you prefer). Don’t forget that June 26 is the 11th anniversary of Obergefell. Whether one believes gay and lesbian couples should marry (from the standpoint of “Marriage is an archaic social institution designed to subjugate women and control property rights”), it’s hard to deny its importance in granting queers equal rights.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 3.5 stars
I thought it was a fun puzzle. I guess why do you feel the need to politicize things so often? It’s a bit jarring and sometimes unseemly. You’re clever and witty and a heck of a solver but I think many people do puzzles to escape politics, why bring it into the puzzle solve when you don’t need to, particularly when you have to shoehorn you’re views in. Just makes you seem a bit petty.
Thanks for your thoughts, Roger. I saw your comments a few days ago, but this week has been a mess — not sleeping well, trying to keep up a little bit with the World Cup and failing miserably, trying to get a little exercise — the life of a retiree can be rough. (That’s sarcasm; I’m very fortunate to be where I am at this point in life, and I’m grateful to the universe for that.)
Thank you for your complimentary words. I’m glad I reread your comment because I’d somehow missed that sentence and seen only the negative things.
“[W]hy do [I] feel the need to politicize things so often?” Because the sociopolitical climate in the United States in 2026 is depressing and frightening. I teeter between despair, resignation and the hope that this is just temporary. And seeing people turn themselves off to the high-stakes games the powerful elites are playing with our lives just makes me want to give up some days.
“It’s a bit jarring and sometimes unseemly.” That’s a matter of opinion, no? What you find “jarring,” someone else might find completely echoes their reaction.
“I think many people do puzzles to escape politics . . . . ” No disagreement there. That’s one of the reasons I solve crossword puzzles.
I don’t think I’m shoehorning my views in as much as I am riffing on wherever the puzzle takes me. In this particular case, I solved quickly and didn’t think about the theme until I started to write my review.
“[A] bit petty.” Maybe, thought I don’t think I’m often “small-minded or spiteful.” That said, I know I can be too judgmental sometimes and I’m working to be better about it.
A couple of times recently, I have jokingly asked Amy to provide us with an editor. I used to write for a living and the reviewers and editors who looked over my work were invaluable. A good editor will catch erroneous statements of fact, poor word choice, a tone that can be misconstrued — a whole host of things. No matter how good a writer is at self-editing, getting another person’s perspective is irreplaceable.
Thanks for reading my reviews. I will honestly try, given the self-imposed time restraints I work under, to moderate my expressed opinions accordingly.
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
Trivia plus dupes plus weak theme equals complete waste of time and space
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 1 star
+1. My first guess for 1A was “Stretch”, which is an appropriate term for the theme of this one.
I didn’t care for it either. I had no idea what was going on with all the shaded squares and the oddly worded clues, but finished the puzzle easily anyway. And then I had no interest in trying to figure out what it was all about. It didn’t help that the phrase SHORTCON means nothing to me, and STONEPIT is an absurd would-be synonym for ‘quarry.’
On top of that, there’s SCANIN (why not just scan?), and PSI (huh?) for ‘telepathy’ adjacent to ESP clued (correctly) as nonsense.
I thought this whole thing was just a mess from start to finish.
“I had no idea what was going on with all the shaded squares and the oddly worded clues, but finished the puzzle easily anyway. And then I had no interest in trying to figure out what it was all about.”
Me, too.
Hello! Constructor of today’s WSJ puzzle here, thanks for reviewing it Eric. Actually, I did have a puzzle air in Universal on November 1 of last year, but no one was available to review it, sadly. I understand your issues with the theme, and looking back at it, the whole idea probably needed a bit of tweaking (especially publishing it this month, not a good first impression for me LOL). This was probably the second puzzle that I sent *anywhere* so its flaws feel a million times more obvious after all that time in the queue. Then again, I recently learned about some of the crazy puzzles WSJ has aired before (the MISSINGCHILDREN one and the very recent BROKENHOME one come to mind), so in a way I’m not surprised that this one got in. I hope that my future puzzles will be more lighthearted than this one (and certainly less unintentionally political, reinforcing a gender binary? During Pride Month? Once again, not a good look for me).
Hunter, there’s nothing wrong with your puzzle. That it was published during Pride Month is an editor issue, not a constructor one. It’s like when a difficult NYT puzzle gets published on a Monday, and people complain — that’s not a reflection of the puzzle, only of the editorial decision to publish it on a certain day.
Congratulations on your second puzzle getting published, and I look forward to seeing more of your puzzles in the future!
Thanks for stopping by, Hunter. I’m sorry no one on Team Fiend was available to review your Universal debut. I know how excited I was when my first puzzle saw publication and how much I enjoyed reading pannonica’s thoughts on it.
I wish that I had made it clear in my review that I didn’t think that you or any of the Wall Street Journal puzzle editors was pushing an agenda of “One man, one woman” or something like that. Rather, the problem is that it apparently never occurred to the WSJ editors that people might interpret the theme that way, given the significance of June to LGBTQ people and our much-appreciated allies.
It’s a bit ironic that you mentioned the Wall Street Journal puzzle with the “missing children” theme. It’s because of that puzzle that we’ve had some switches here at Fiend in who reviews the WSJ puzzle, and one of those switches was me taking over Wednesday.
Thanks, and I’m genuinely looking forward to seeing your byline again soon. Good luck!
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 2.5 stars
The theme was fine. The double GOOFOFFS gag was weirdly cool, yet the theme didn’t really reach me until I had half the themers (ere RIFFLESHUFFLES). Still, the theme was sorta neat once I finished, except that the themers felt too bland for my tastes.
My main issue with this puzzle wasn’t the theme so much, and neither was the fill. There were just too many pop culture references for me. A bunch of Disney here, a load of old rock-‘n’-roll there, and even more film-related trivia all over the grid. Now, I enjoy classic rock, and even I know when enough is enough. Some of these references didn’t even have to be pop culture related at all (ex. CARS, PERU)
All in all, an okay theme with too much pop culture syrup poured on top makes me give this puzzle 2.5 stars. Tata for now!
P.S. I would usually have a favorite entry for a puzzle, but nothing really stood out to me. So no favorite entry :(
i’m usually pretty good at predicting when a puzzle will have a low star rating on here but i really thought the nyt would be over 4 today. super cool theme
Puzzle: NYT; Rating: 3 stars
You have to filter out some of the loser troll ratings.
I thought it was really good in some places, but on the other hand I didn’t care for reusing GOOFOFFS. I feel like if you’re going to do that, then reusing words should be the point of the theme. Also a lot of proper names, but at least they weren’t hard.
Puzzle: Universal; Rating: 5 stars
My experience echoed pannonica’s in that my appreciation for this puzzle soared after realizing — with the reveal — the sheer elegance of the construction. Bravo!
NYT: Interesting theme – must have taken some work to come up with entries that would work.
I think a proper RIFFLE SHUFFLE should not leave the top card (letter) in its original position.
Puzzle: WSJ; Rating: 3.5 stars
WSJ: Fun puzzle with good fill. I hope we see more from this constructor.
I completely misunderstood the theme because the first five answers are also movie titles so I thought that’s where we were headed. The sixth is not a title, but a fairly well-known movie quote. I didn’t even notice the puzzle title until afterward, so a weird coincidence!